Editor’s note: Today’s post is from Liz O’Neill from Kapost. Couple reasons I asked a Kapost writer to write again for the Funnelholic. First, the earlier post on managing an editorial calendar was awesome and got fantastic traffic. Secondly, they announced content scoring and I think it’s an exciting breakthrough in content marketing. Oh and they have great writers. Liz is one of those great writers as you can tell by this thorough and well-written post. Enjoy.

Marketers are expected to publish content that results in a constant stream of valuable leads. While innovations like lead scoring offer insight into whether marketers are hitting lead gen goals, understanding exactly why they are — and what content influenced those leads — has involved a lot of “educated guessing.” Until now.

Content scoring is a process that reveals exactly how many leads and opportunities a piece of content generates. Unlike pageviews, uniques and shares, content score applies an actual numerical value (a “content score”) to the content an organization produces based on how leads, opportunities or closed deals interacted with that content.

The result is valuable insight into the true ROI of content, enabling marketers to make informed decisions about which content assets to produce.

How Content Scoring Works

So, how does content scoring work exactly? Put simply, it works backwards from a buyer’s journey to specified conversion stage, highlighting the content that buyer digested along the way.

Let’s explore by taking a look at the journeys of two marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

Years ago I was in charge of marketing and demand generation for an online media company. We were publishers whose main product was leads. We would generate leads on our clients’ behalf via content syndication, webinars, etc. We had one client that bought as many leads as they could from us. They had metrics and conversion rates that they would present to us each quarter, a team of marketers working on demand generation and an agency, and an inside sales team dedicating to qualifying leads for sales. Their game was tight. We revered them. [Read more…]

Editor’s Note: I asked Jean Spencer of Kapost to put together a “how-to” for the content marketing automation software, Kapost. This is a very cool company based in Boulder, Colorado and is making the lives of content marketers around the world easier.

In the world of B2B marketing, content has taken center stage. Nine out of 10 B2B marketers are using content marketing and, as numerous studies explore, inbound tactics deliver promising leads into the sales funnel.

In a world where buyers screen their phone calls and research options independently of salespeople, marketers use content to attract those buyers and nurture them toward purchase, setting up sales with a pipeline of qualified leads and potential revenue. And we all agree more revenue is a good thing.

But what marketers (seemingly) can’t agree on, is what kind of tool will help them deliver results.

Less than half of B2B marketers report having a documented content strategy. But as the number of blogs, tweets, videos, and eBooks increases the deluge can be overwhelming.

You need a software that can manage your content assets, a single place that keeps track of your strategy, production, and analytics.

Say hello to, Kapost (yes, I’m biased…but, seriously, this product rocks. I use it every day. Ask me anything.). Today, I’ll show you how to use Kapost to manage your editorial calendar.

The editorial calendar is the hub for content management—and, as far as we’ve seen, it’s the most requested feature in content organizational tools.

Hopefully, by the end of all these steps, you’ll be a master of the editorial calendar (and drooling to see what else Kapost can do).

Step 1: Identify Your Contributors

According to Gartner, CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs by 2017. Yes, I know many of you have heard this prediction over and over again but keep listening, because this prediction is so bold that it is hard to fathom. At least in B2B, marketers were the weak link on the executive team. They sat at the kid’s table at the party while the “adults” ate steak and patted each other on the back. Begging for money internally was about pitching a bunch of people on the executive team who had no idea what they were trying to do and hearing “no”. One of my favorites from years back was when my buddy who is a demand generation rockstar VP of Marketing was telling me that his CEO wouldn’t give him budget for anything but did feel like he should be spending his time trying to get him on Oprah. (Seriously). Boy, that has changed. The marketer has been given a checkbook.

The Funnelholic is a media sponsor for a new, upcoming event for marketers: REVTalks in San Francisco on January 27th, 2014. 36 great speakers. (Yes, 36). What we liked was the number of practitioners that are speaking. For me personally, practitioners means great content. (If you have ever heard Meagan Eisenberg you will know what I am talking about. She is always doing some forward-looking marketing) These are the people that have to do it not just talk about it. I asked Debbie Qaqish from Pedowitz Group 7 questions about the event which we present to you in this post. Enjoy!

I have written in the past how the marketing automation now marketing software market has changed and that I longed for the days of big news, public spats, and gossip. One of my most visited posts was Ridiculous Ramblings about the Marketing Automation Market. (Twitter counter is broken so don’t be deceived by the number of tweets)

Joe and I had a great time when he was with Eloqua. His tenure marked my favorite times in the marketing automation now marketing software space. He is such a passionate guy who just isn’t afraid to fight for what he thinks is right. He is so Boston. (compliment). I was going to say he is a fighter. (Marketo may agree) But to describe Joe as a fighter doesn’t paint the right picture. Yes, he had public spats but it wasn’t for show. It was because he believed he was right. It was fun and uncomfortable at the same time. I certainly didn’t agree with him on everything but I loved DM’ing back and forth with him. I missed him from the marketing space. But he is back and he joins Hubspot which means we will see and hear him again.

The man behind the scenes of the Funnelholic — Paul Rosenberg has crowd-sourced a really cool video featuring top b2b marketing thought leaders that will be featured in the upcoming virtual summit from Demandbase and Adobe: Marketing’s Next Move. I hope you get a chance to check it out!

He asked each thought leader the following question: How will B2B marketing innovation allow marketers to be more effective? You can see my answer below….you can see the rest of the answers here.

I have been in a content marketing rush leading up to our virtual summit which I hope you will join! — Keys to Content Marketing Success on August 14 starting at 9am PDT. As I worked on my latest post, I was researching and one of my Madlibs showed up on screen. I realized I was sitting on a library of content. (DUH!). So, I combined all the answers from Madlibs on content marketing and there is some great stuff. I hope you enjoy…The way this works is: I start the sentence and the contributor finishes the sentence.